


Time Moats and Orange Spots

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dubious Consent, Fantasy, Giant spider (sort of), Monsterfucking, Other, Oviposition, Oviposition feels incredible, Pregnant with Telepathic Creature(s), Time Shenanigans, Trapped in a web and unable to move, Unfortunately the main character is the shittest bodyguard ever, violence and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:09:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: Every now and then Térése hears an inner voice telling her in no uncertain terms that she's absolutely fucked. She probably should have taken a bit more notice of it.





	Time Moats and Orange Spots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ba_lailah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_lailah/gifts).

It wasn’t like Térése had been born with the sight or anything, but every now and then she got this feeling. Except it wasn’t so much of a feeling as an inner voice that whispered inside her skull, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was absolutely fucked.

She’d heard it on the first night of the Clemency Day Riots back in Tuule, and at that point the violence hadn’t quite escalated to mass murder and the immolation of escaping ships, so there’d been no reason for her to start worrying. She’d been through worse outbreaks of civil unrest: it was a quiet night in Thuule when someone didn’t riot over something. Except, of course, for the inner voice, which had been so insistent that she’d decided to ignore the louder voice of her common sense telling her it’d all blow over, because it always had before, and fuck it, she was getting paid enough to take the infinitesimal risk that everything would in fact all go to shit. The ship she escaped on was a reeking shit-heap and it was a miracle it didn’t sink, but it was one of the last that escaped the cityport with anyone aboard still actually alive.

And then there was that mage who hired her to escort him from Coppergate to the Valley of the Whistlers. Perfectly pleasant, sweet and self-effacing: she was already thinking about fucking him for the fun of it before they’d passed through the gate – she liked the ones who got flustered at the mere proximity of a pair of tits. Except then they entered the thickly forested valleys that ran between the crags that clawed up towards the heavens.

This should have been a relatively peaceful bit of the journey, and she was looking forward to it: at that time of year the flowers that grew there were like a carpet of iridescent lilac smoke, and the plentiful pools of crystalline water fed by bubbling waterfalls were just the perfect place to – whoops! – get accidentally caught bathing by a man who’d spent altogether too much time around books and not nearly enough time around breasts. Chances were pretty good he was a virgin and she liked virgins – they were, in her experience, usually so grateful at not being mocked at spunking their load too early that they were willing to take intricate direction, and there was no reason to think he was any sort of threat at all.

And then, that little voice started to whisper, telling her that something wasn’t right with him and she needed to put a shit-ton of distance between the two of them as a matter of some urgency. It wouldn’t shut up and it wouldn’t go away, and as it turned out that was just as well. Whether the malaika had taken him before they’d left Coppergate, or at some point along their journey so far (_ bang up job of bodyguarding you’ve done there, Térése, love, _she could virtually hear her mother saying), she didn’t know. She supposed it didn’t really matter: the only important thing was that she didn’t have to find out the hard way that her charge was a walking skin-sack inhabited by a shape-shifting demon with a taste for human flesh, and was just waiting for the right moment to peel open its carcass of choice and make itself known.

A couple of bandits with terribly unlucky timing hadn’t been quite so lucky. Poor bastards.

Meanwhile there was Térése making a speedy exit with only half her pay in her pocket and a slightly guilty (although admittedly when the screams began not-at-all guilty) conscience, while the little voice smugly commented, _ Told you so. _

It wasn’t her voice, she was pretty sure of that. It was nothing at all like any of her other inner voices, such as the self-critical one that sounded _ exactly _ like her mother. There was a weird sort of dissonance to it, like it wasn’t coming out of an (imaginary) human chest. And it was a dickish little fucker too. Under normal circumstances, she’d have taken great pleasure in ignoring it, except that the little shit always turned out to be right.

It had been weirdly quiet about this job, though, when even Térése who was habitually nonchalant about her own safety had been leery about it from the outset. Partly because of the risk – the Shiverglass Isles were veined with ancient dungeons that dated back to a time before known history, and were known for being unpredictable when it came to risk and reward – but mainly, if she was honest, because she couldn’t stand her employer.

Dray Ackerman was not the bookish owlishly blinking sort of scholar she was rather fond of, but a hobbyist from a wealthy family, arrogant and smug and wealthier than he had any right to be. He was also youthful and athletic and irritatingly handsome, and even more irritatingly aware of it, as if he was convinced she should have fallen on her knees and sucked his cock out of pure gratitude at being blessed with his presence.

In other words he was everything Térése hated in a man.

She’d been to the Isles before a couple of times, which sort of helped. It meant she knew what to expect, which was that she couldn’t know what to expect at all. People who got complacent about the Isles were the ones who ended up in pieces, both figuratively and literally, and usually in that order.

The seas around the isles were rife with hidden shoals and submerged rocks, and beset by storms that swept in out of nowhere. It wasn’t just the dungeons that were impossible to map, but the entire chain of islands, and since you could never be certain of finding any actual treasure, often any profit made would be wiped out by the exorbitant fees charged by whatever sailing crew you’d picked that was stupid or greedy enough to transport you. Plus it was standard to pay half their fee up-front (they weren’t that stupid), so there was always the chance that they’d just drop you at the islands and fuck off without bothering to wait and see if you survived.

Ackerman, standing up at the prow with his hands on his hips and his stupid fatuous golden hair blowing in the breeze like he fancied himself as the ship’s figurehead, seemed to be the only one unaware of this.

There was a silvery glow at the horizon where the Isles rose out of the churning water. The sky was overcast, but the shining glass caught every bit of light and reflected it back out at the world, fundamentally changed. With the wind whipping at her hair and a hollow sensation in her chest, Térése felt on edge, like she was just waiting for the little voice to speak up and tell her what a terrible idea this was and demand to know what the fuck she was thinking. She’d already decided that if it did speak up, she wouldn’t bother to second-guess it. It was the Isles. You didn’t fuck about with the Isles. You went there when the auguries were tip-fucking-top or you didn’t go at all.

Ackerman wouldn’t like it, but she’d tip him over the bleeding side if she had to, and the crew wouldn’t argue, probably wouldn’t even blink, especially if she hinted darkly about ill omens. There wasn’t much you could rely on in this world, but sailors being superstitious was one of them.

The voice didn’t speak up, although she had a feeling it was there. The crew eased the ship through the rocks, every soul present dreading the sound of the ship being disembowelled on a hidden outcrop of rock. Lead-coloured waves lashed against the white shimmering rock, the reflection of the ship looming on the mirrored surface while the sailors turned their faces away and spat. More superstition. You didn’t go looking at the reflections in case you saw a skeletal face peering back at you, a spirit which would then have the power to claw itself inside you and take up residence there.

Térése wasn’t superstitious as a rule, but it was the Isles and with the Isles you never fucked about, so when she caught sight of her reflection in the corner of her eye, she ignored the instinctive urge to glance at her pallid distorted face and glowered at Ackerman’s smug bastard back instead. It was just unfortunate that he chose that exact moment to turn around, tossing his hair like the arsehole he was, and catch her looking. He smirked, presumably under the mistaken impression that his smile was charming, when in fact it made her want to punch him in the face.

On the Isles themselves he was even worse. They’d taken a row-boat in, just the two of them like a bickering couple who secretly hated each other’s guts pretending that a jaunt across a boating lake wasn’t their own personal circle of hell. Ackerman insisted on doing most of the rowing, because god forbid he should miss the chance to show off his muscles and what a fucking _ gentleman _ he was, the massive arsehole.

Trouble was, he did seem to know what he was doing, but if that was true he hadn’t bothered to explain it to her. Everyone knew it was impossible to map the Isles, either the chain itself or its ever-shifting labyrinth of dungeons. Except that he seemed to think he could do exactly that.

He’d removed a book from his pack and unwrapped it reverently so he could leaf through its pages, checking whatever information he could find there against a series of readings he was taking from the surrounding environment. And he’d been at it for hours.

Térése had taken a nosy earlier on, glancing over his shoulder at the book. She could read most languages of scholarship, but hadn’t been able to make out much from the esoteric diagrams. The writing was close and spidery, so scratchy and faded she could barely read it, and then Ackerman glared up at her and shielded the page with his arm like he was a bloody schoolchild, so she gave up and sidled up to the dungeon’s entrance.

Narrow well-worn steps led downward, spiralling around so she couldn’t see much more than a few yards. She could hear something though, a low moaning that might have been either the sound of the wind or the souls of the damned. She figured fifty-fifty either way. Out of curiosity, she pulled a copper from her purse and chucked it down the steps, listening as it skittered away, round the spiral and out of sight.

_ Fuck this _, she thought morosely.

Ackerman was still bent over the book, pushing his hair out of his eyes with an impatient gesture and frowning darkly. Occasionally he’d make very careful notes to himself in a notebook and check the readings on a bafflingly complicated brass instrument of some kind, squinting through the eyepiece at the pattern of rocks emerging from the water.

She turned away from the cave and cleared her throat. He ignored her, his clenching jaw the only sign he’d heard her.

_ Wanker. _

“Shall we just not go in and claim we did?” she said brightly. His jaw clenched tighter. That was the one bright spot in her day: irritating him as much as he irritated her. “Not like we’re likely to find any treasure. They’ll just be impressed we survived.”

He sniffed and raised his gaze to hers, his carefully groomed eyebrows equally carefully poised in an expression of dear-gods-you-really-are-a-fucking-idiot-aren’t-you. “We are not here for ‘treasure’.”

“Suicide mission, is it?”

“I pray not,” he said, raising the instrument to his eye again, tweaking the dial with a twitch of his slender fingers. “But the advance of knowledge does occasionally require a modicum of risk.” Another twitch of his fingers and then he nodded as if his suspicions had been confirmed. He turned back to the book, running his finger down a line of numbers. Curious, despite herself, Térése sidled over and peered over his shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a map of sorts.”

“What, of the Shiverglass Isles?”

“No, of the Twelve Gates. _ Of course _ of the Isles. It wouldn’t be much use otherwise, would it?”

_ You absolute cock _ , she thought, baring her teeth in a not-quite-grin. “Very true. Except that the Isles can’t be mapped, can they? Not with any degree of accuracy. Everyone knows that. Not like it hasn’t been tried before. It always ends badly.” _ Like this is inevitably going to, _ she thought, and wondered again where that little voice had got to.

He snapped the book shut and returned her smile with one that was very nearly as unfriendly as her own. So much so that she was actually a little impressed. “I see. Well, forgive me, my lady, I hadn’t realised I was in the company of an expert. A scholar of the Isles, are you?”

“I’ve been here before and I haven’t died. So yeah, actually, I think I’ve earned the right to say I know something about them. They can’t be mapped because they move.”

“A common error,” he said as he returned the book to his back. “And one exceedingly widespread even amongst scholars who really ought to know better, so I don’t blame _ you _.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “As a point of fact, they don’t move at all. Would you like to know why?”

“Not really, no.” Which was technically a lie, since she actually was just the tiniest bit curious.

“They do not move because it is the world that moves about them,” he pronounced with relish and what was, for the first time, a hint of a genuine smile.

She frowned, considering this as he approached the mouth of the cave, shouldering his pack. “You mean… Like if I was sitting on a carriage and looking out at the land, it might look like it was moving but really it’d just be me?”

“Something like that,” he agreed. “You’re very nearly right.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Except, of course, for the part where you’re entirely wrong,” he said and started down the stairs.

She glared at his back, wishing she could shove him down the stairs and have done. But better not: she’d only get half her pay and despite herself she found she was a little curious.

She’d always wondered about the Isles. Every adventurer did. It was said if you survived the Isles once you’d always come back; something about them got into you somehow, into your blood. Térése didn’t know if that was true or not, but she’d been here twice before already, and each time she swore she’d never come back. Yet here she was again. Third time around, and this time she had a feeling she was really pushing her luck.

Just as she stepped over the threshold, the inner voice spoke.

_ This _ , it announced, _ is a really bad idea. _

She stopped on the first step. Below Ackerman whistled tunefully, the bright colours of his embroidered travelling cloak not quite lost in the murk. “You what?” she said, keeping her voice low so he couldn’t hear.

_ Just thought we’d mention it, _ the voice said. _ You probably know that already, mind. _

She waited, but it said nothing else. “Well… I mean, hold on, what should I do, then?” she asked. “I mean, should I cut my losses or what?”

_ What are you asking us for? _

“Because you never fucking shut up about what I should do. Remember Tuule? And that time the granary caught fire when I was a kid?”

_ Oh, that. Well, that’s different. You might have died. _

“Right. So, you mean I’m going to survive this.”

_ Yes. _

“Okay. Good.”

She took another step, then the voice added, _ More or less, anyway. _

“Oh, for the love of _ fuck _.”

Ackerman had stopped and was looking up at her, scowling. “Are you coming or not?”

Térése sighed and waved at him impatiently, pretending to rummage in her pack. When nothing more came from the inner voice, she started down after him. This was the Isles after all, she figured. More or less surviving them was pretty good odds, on the whole.

“What did you really mean?” she asked Ackerman when she’d caught up with him. “When you said I didn’t have it quite right?”

He glanced at her. “As I recall, I said you were entirely wrong.”

She glared at his back and for a few yards they descended in silence. After a few moments of that she spoke up again, her voice cheery and casual. “This map of yours?”

“What about it?”

“It must be rare.”

“Incredibly rare, yes. It’s unique. In a manner of speaking.” He smirked. “Although in another manner of speaking, there are millions of copies. An infinite number to be exact.”

“But it’s valuable?”

“Priceless,” he agreed.

“So, really, while there’s no guarantee that the dungeons below us carry any actual treasure–”

“I told you,” he said with a touch of asperity. “We aren’t here for ‘treasure.’”

“You might not be. I’m here to get paid. And while there’s no guarantee of coin down there, it strikes me...” She paused for effect. He was now eyeing her with the faint sickly look of someone who’d just begun to realise he might have miscalculated. “...It strikes me, there’s at least one guaranteed source of coin that’s not all that far away.”

“Are you threatening me, madam?”

She offered up a sweetly bland smile. “I dunno. Am I?”

_ Oh dear, _ the internal voice muttered. _ Oh dear oh dear oh dear. _

_ Fuck off, _she rejoined and bared her teeth wider. “Of course I’m not threatening you,” she said brightly. “Shall we try this again?”

“Try… try what?”

“Well, let’s start with what you really meant about the Isles. About the world moving about them. How’s that work then?”

He eyed uncertainly her a few moments. Térése decided she liked him a lot more when he wasn’t sure whether to be afraid of her. Arrogance won out.

“They don’t move through space,” he said finally, the slightest quaver in his voice spoiling the effect. “They move through time. Or rather… the _ world _ moves through time and the Isles – all of them – are fixed points in time and as we move past them, they change, do you see?”

“Right.” She thought about this. “No, not really.”

“Hmm.” He rubbed his perfectly shaven chin, thinking. “Well… okay, think of time as a river– No, wait, not a river, but a moat, and the Isles are the castle at the centre with a great many doors. And imagine the world as a boat carried on the surface of the water, and yourself as a passenger on that boat, are you following me so far?”

“I think so.” Damn, she should have threatened to kill him long ago; he was much more bearable like this. Never mind that he seemed to be directing his lecture at an imagined audience rather than at her, but his eyes had brightened and there was an expressiveness to his gestures that made her think fondly of all the mages she’d, uh, escorted over the years. Inexperienced, to be sure, but passionate as the flames of hell when you got them on the right subject. As it were.

“Excellent. Now imagine that you’re staring at the deck of the ship, and every time you look up – while the ship is travelling around the moat and therefore through time, you understand? – you see a different door.”

She frowned. It sort of almost made a glimmer of sense.

“And the act of seeing the Isles is analogous to disembarking at the castle,” he continued. “Once you’re here, you’re at a fixed point in time. Are you still following me?”

“Ye-es,” she said, then realised it might actually be true. “So when you leave the dungeon, you return to the same time at which you left.”

“On the Isle itself, yes. But of course the sailors don’t realise because--”

“Because they’re at the fixed point in time too, so they don’t realise, because time is moving at the same speed for them as it is for us.”

“Remarkable.” He cast her a reassessing glance. “You know, you’re not quite as...” He hesitated, and she guessed he was trying to find a synonym for ‘ill-educated’ that didn’t make it sound like he’d pegged her as a total fuckwit from the start. She let him haver for a bit because she quite liked the look of borderline panic in his eyes, then took pity on him.

“As stupid as you suspected?” she suggested, and grinned when he shot her a wary glance. “Well, no, I wouldn’t be. I was a member of the Conclave once upon a time.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“Only very briefly,” she said, which was absolutely true – she’d lasted all of two and a half days before she was kicked out – but he didn’t need to know that, so she said it in a voice that implied she was playing down her accomplishments. “My name happens to be listed on the Tapestry Scroll.” In ink. Hidden on the back where she’d scrawled it herself when she was drunk and bitter about having been kicked out. But again this was something he very definitely did not need to know.

He was looking at her very differently now, gazing with a light that made her shift uncomfortably. As arrogant as he’d been on the boat, it was easy to forget how really very young he was, scarcely old enough to have joined the Conclave, and certainly not old enough to have his name emblazoned on the vast tapestry that listed the men and women of remarkable achievement who’d walked its marble corridors. Something in his eyes that looked uncomfortably to Térése like awe.

“I wouldn’t have thought you were old enough,” he said, and she fought the urge to grit her teeth. Any more of this and there was a danger she might actually start to like him.

“I’m much older than I look,” she said.

“Hm,” he said, as she continued past him down the staircase. Another spiral of the staircase and they finally, _ finally _, reached the bottom, the narrow walls opening out onto an even narrower corridor, softly lit by sconces flooded with the ever-burning scorched orange light of sorcerous flames. “You know, it could be the influence of the Isles.”

“Could be.” She was only half-listening, her attention fixed on the corridor and a patch of shadowed darkness where one of the sconces had gone out. Except works of sorcery from the old world and the lost times beyond _ never _ stopped working. They didn’t wear out, or break, or start to malfunction, not in her experience, which meant that darkened sconce had been darkened deliberately. That wasn’t a thought she liked much. Very carefully, she set her hand on the hilt of her knife.

“Gosh.”

“This castle, though,” she said, when nothing terrible immediately happened. “Although I guess I mean the Isles. How many doors are there?”

“That I can’t say, I’m afraid, but the calculations suggest it might well be an infinite number.” He smiled, his eyes bright. “But what I _ am _ certain of is that they are all part of the same structure, and that they lead, ultimately, to a single shared space at the heart of the Isles.”

“And at that heart?”

He shot her a strange look, a mixture of excitement, uncertainty, and, for the first time, a glimmer of genuine fear. “I have absolutely no idea.”

It was a funny thing, that look: in an instant it seemed to wipe away his arrogance, two-and-a-bit decades worth of rock-solid confidence in his own unwavering infallibility, which had come courtesy of his being born into a wealthy family with all its advantages. For a moment he might have been nothing more than a passionate smiling young man risking his life – and, incidentally, hers, but she was used to that – in pursuit of knowledge, and that suddenly made it much, much easier for Térése to genuinely like him.

Which only made it all the more awkward when the massive fucking orange spider bit his head off.

** **

*

** **

_ See _ , the inner voice said mournfully. _ We told you this was a bad idea. _

Térése, stuck to the wall in a tangle of sticky spider webs, gritted her teeth. “You could have been a bit more specific.” Her voice was slurred, swallowed up by the webbing that filled the cavernous chamber. The stuff was everywhere, a labyrinth of sticky filaments, pillars that stretched from floor to ceiling, swags of glistening white stuff drifting in a draught and casting skittering shadows across the room.

_ Oh, we couldn’t have done that, _ the voice said. _ You might not have come. _

Térése closed her eyes. Then, because closing her eyes meant she wouldn’t be able to see the monster coming, she opened them again. 

Her head still stung from where she’d struck it against the stone, but that had been a blessing in a way. It meant that she’d only caught glimpses of the monster as it had scuttled closer, its skin tiger-striped with orange and waxy-white, the mottled patterns shifting with the changing light. And then it had been right on top of her, pressing close as a lover as it snuffled at her throat. She’d squeezed her eyes shut, fumbling at her belt for her knife knowing it was too late, that there wasn’t a bloody thing she could do, then she felt searing pain in her neck, and she realised it had bitten her. A vice-like grip closed around her ankle and it had started to drag her, and then… nothing. She’d blacked out, either because of the venom in its bite or because of her head wound, and when she’d woken up, she found herself stuck to the wall and fuzzy-headed, unsure whether she should have been relieved to find herself alive or not.

It hadn’t actually killed her, that was true. Nope, it had just picked her up and hauled her off to its lair of web-wrapped dangling corpses. It was the same thing with Ackerman. Technically it hadn’t bitten his head off, only sort of gripped it with one of its central pairs of arms and twisted it off, which… really wasn’t much better, on the whole, yet her mind kept returning to that fact as if it was somehow reassuring.

_ I’m still alive, _ she told herself. _ Still alive, and in the Isles that counts as a win. _

“Hooray,” she muttered aloud, and then giggled. It sounded much less hysterical than she might have expected, the product of giddiness rather than terror.

And then, somewhere inside her mind, the voice did the equivalent of clearing its throat. _ Look… _ it started, then stopped.

“What is it?” She grinned, still giddy, and tugged at the web in case it had got any looser since the last time she tried it. It hadn’t.

_ This is… Well, it’s going to be a bit awkward, but the main thing to remember is that there’s really no reason to panic. _

It said this in a tone that implied that in fact there was every reason to panic.

“Panic about what?” she asked, and then the hulking shape of the monster emerged from the shadows at the end of the room, weaving in and around the columns of webbing as it drew closer.

_ Well, uh, probably _ that, _ for starters. _

Close up, and with time to recover from the blow on the head, she could see it wasn’t so much a spider as a monstrosity that was vaguely spider-shaped: three humanish torsos melded together at the waist like a fanned hand of cards, with a bulbous abdomen and barbed chitinous legs. It had arms – lots of arms, jutting out from each torso – and waxy-pale skin mottled with orange and grey markings. The heads of the torsos were stubby little protrusions with glittering eyes like fragments of mirror set in the pits of its eye-sockets. Or their eye-sockets. Térése wasn’t sure if it was singular or plural, only that she didn’t want to know anything more about it than was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, she suspected she wasn’t going to get much of a choice in the matter.

At the patch of melted flesh where a crotch might have been, the monster had a weird slit the length of a palm, the edges orange and delicately frilled. As she stared, the edges twitched and she forced her gaze back up to the head of the middle torso.

“What’s it going to do to me?”

_ Um... _

“Just fucking tell me.”

_ Nothing at all that you don’t consent to. _

“Right. And if I don’t consent?”

_ Well, it’ll leave you alone… _

“Good...”

_ ...And then you’ll die. _

“Ah.”

_ Sorry. _

She wriggled against the wall, working her torso around. Her knife was still in its scabbard on her belt and hope sparked in her chest. _ But, _ she thought at the voice – she wasn’t sure the monster understood her, but always better to be on the safe side – _ if I can cut myself down, it won’t actually attack me? I mean, considering what happened to Ackerman… _

_ It won’t attack you, _ the voice said. _ I can absolutely guarantee that, but, um… it’s a bit more complicated than that. _

“Of course it is. So, I’ll die how? Traps? More monsters? Getting lost in an ever-shifting labyrinth?” She’d faced all those things and survived. Her odds might not be great, but she’d gone up against worse. She must have.

_ Remember when you were eight and the granary burned down? _

That was not something she’d been expecting. “Ye-es.”

_ Well, then, basically. Probably. If you’re very lucky, you might have made it to Thuule. _

“Thuule?” The beginning of a horrible realisation was starting to develop in her chest. She couldn’t quite grasp it in its entirety, only skirt the boundaries. “You mean all the times I’ve managed to escape trouble by listening to my inner voice.”

_ Our inner voice, excuse you. _

“Oh shit. Oh shitshitshit. All this time I’ve...” She swallowed, and took a breath. “Who are you? What are you? I don’t want to know, do I? _ Fuck. _”

_ Now you’re just overreacting. _

“_ Over-reacting _?!”

_ Look at it this way, are you scared? Afraid for your life? _

She… wasn’t, she realised. Not even with the massive fucking spider-thing hovering there, somehow contriving to look hopeful despite technically not having a face. She wasn’t scared, or in any pain either. Even the sting of where she’d hit her head had receded somewhere to the back of her mind. And there seemed a strange sort of inevitability about this, as though somehow it had been meant to happen, as if this was the reason she’d not only kept returning to the Isles, but had kept surviving returning to the Isles. She wasn’t scared. She should have been, but she wasn’t. Not even slightly.

She probably ought to be more worried about that.

_ Take it from us, _ the voice said. _ It really won’t be that bad. _

That terrible realisation crept a little closer.

“Who are you?”

There was a moment’s pause, a fizzing sense like something being discussed behind her back, then: _ We’re your children. _

Her first thought was: What the fuck do you mean, ‘we’? Her second, only slightly more pressing was, “But I’ve never been pregnant!”

_ Not yet. _

“Oh sweet fucking gods. This has got something to do with Ackerman’s fucking time-moat hasn’t it? Fuck. I knew I should have thrown that arsehole overboard.”

_ You’d never have done it. _

“No? I came damn close.”

_ Yes, but you’d never have actually done it. Because you’re here, see? And so are we. Or… we will be. Soonish. So it couldn’t have happened, because if it had, we’d never have been born and you’d be– Look, we’re not going to get into the complexities of pre-destination and time paradoxes now. It really doesn’t seem like the appropriate time. _

“Nothing about this is appropriate.” Although it was the Isles, so… She drew a breath. “I don’t really have a choice do I?”

_ Of course you have a choice. It just happens that we know exactly what choice you’ll make. It won’t hurt. And, well, look, it’ll all turn out more or less okay in the end, we promise. _

She took a breath, long and slow and steady, then, gritting her teeth, she nodded.

_ You sure? _

“Yes!” she spat. “Just fucking get it over with.”

** **

*

** **

It wouldn’t hurt, the voice had said, and godsdamn, it hadn’t been lying about that. Because it didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite in fact.

The monster’s first act was to lean closer and very gently bite her again. It didn’t hurt at all this time around. Instead a strange sensation spread outwards from the bite, not numbness but a rippling wave of warmth and languor that flooded through her, loosening every tensed up muscle and making her skin prickle with sensation. It was extraordinarily pleasant.

“Oh,” she said out loud, her voice dreamy. She was distantly aware that the monster was still leaning close, heat radiating off its mottled skin in waves, and its proximity raised goosebumps on her skin as it gently, insistently, tugged at the fastening ties of her breeches and pulled them and her undergarments down to bunch around her knees. Térése leaned against the cool certainty of the stone at her back, cushioned by webbing, and let it without even the slightest of qualms.

Then it eased away and settled back to wait. Gradually the pooling heat in her belly began to spread through her until it was hard to ignore the ache in her groin.

It wasn’t even that hideous, she thought, intrigued by it now that even her doubts had faded to the back of her mind. Well, no, okay, it was a _ bit _ hideous, there was no getting around that, but the orange mottling camouflage was really rather pretty when she looked at it closely, and its eyes glittered like jewels. She’d never been much for actually wearing jewellery herself, but she’d never met a precious stone she didn’t like.

Plus, it was fascinating. It almost made her a little bit sad that poor Ackerman never got the chance to study it. He would have been fascinated too, she was certain, once he’d stopped screaming.

The edges of the slit bulged and something came snaking out. It was more slender than the average cock, but much, much longer, as long as her forearm at least and tipped with a bulbous head. It was as pliable as a snake, its surface rippled with ridges. At about seven or eight inches along its head, those ridges lengthened and broke apart into a fringe of bristling fronds which wriggled and writhed, the movement so frenzied that she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

Part of her knew, very distantly, academically, that she ought to be terrified at the sight of it, but instead she was overwhelmed by a flood of need, the certainty that, hang the consequences, she wanted that thing inside her. It would feel incredible, she was certain of that and that this, somehow, was what she was meant to do, that all her life had been building up to this moment. Besides, even if another more logical part of her was distantly wondering just how much of a very bad idea this was, it wasn’t like it mattered, because there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. More to the point, she wasn’t sure she would have done anything about it, even if the webbing broke and freed her.

The monster was still just within an arm-span away from her, but the tip of its appendage was already wriggling between her thighs and finding her entrance, the ridges rubbing against her clitoris. She gasped, opening her legs as wide as she could. Her breathing was shallow, her eyes half-closed, the orange light dancing through the lids, the pattern of markings shifting over the monster’s skin in an almost hypnotic dance. Its central hands, all four of them, were on her breasts, squeezing them, caressing them, flicking and playing with the nipples while she groaned, and even though it occurred to her that those must be the hands that twisted Ackerman’s head off, fuck it, the arsehole had probably been asking for it.

The appendage worked its way inside her, its inching progress agonisingly slow. Once it was fully inside her, thankfully to the depth of a normal cock, it didn’t retreat, but its entire length writhed against her with pulsing movements that pressed tightly against the front wall of her passage, and the fringe of fronds twisted against the outer lips and folds of her sex, seeming almost to deliberately seek out her clitoris to torment it with constant contact.

The first orgasm took her without warning, tearing through her. A sob ripped its way out of her throat, and she pressed back against the wall, her breasts arching out towards the monster. Her legs clamped tight, her hips jerking out towards it, her body spasming as fiercely as it was able to spasm given the webbing holding her fast.

She gasped, returning to herself, and stared down in fascination at the pulsing appendage. Where it emerged from the monster’s body, its base was as thick as a man’s thigh, the skin fragile and translucent, marbled with veins. As she stared out, it darkened, something about the size of a clenched fist passing through and along the length of the appendage, which bulged out as whatever it was passed along its length before vanishing out of sight between her legs.

Better not to think about that too closely, she thought dreamily, and laughed, dropping her head back against the stone. She felt it inside her, a sort of bunching, and she shivered, biting her lower lip. The pleasure was building again as the appendage continued to flex and twist and writhe a little more roughly as it brought her without mercy back to a weeping, writhing, begging knot of pleasure.

At the moment of her peak, she felt a strange sensation inside her, not painful, but a weirdly insistent sort of pulsing. It was accompanied by the sensation of being flooded and of being enveloped in a haze of the most gloriously exquisite pleasure she’d ever felt in her life. The orgasm was so powerful it felt like she’d been wrenched out of her body, every nerve ending flooded with sensation. 

Gradually she returned to her body, and while she was recovering, limp and helpless and panting, the inner voice spoke again.

_ See _ , it said as the monster backed off, its appendage slipping gently out of her, leaving her inner thighs wet and sticky. _ We told you it wouldn’t be that bad. _

** **

*

** **

She must have blacked out, because when she came to she found herself crumpled on the floor with sticky strands of the web still clinging to naked skin. Skin that seemed to ripple for a moment in the strange light with a pattern of orange mottled dots that rose up like a rash on her skin and then faded away so completely she wondered if she’d imagined it.

Ackerman’s corpse had vanished, but his pack was there along with everything in it. She rummaged through it, hesitated when she found the book which had brought him here, still neatly wrapped. Priceless, he’d said, and she chewed on the inside of her mouth, thinking. Then she shoved it aside and pulled out some of his spare clothes, tugging them on as she made for the door.

There was still no pain, no fear, only the enveloping coolness of knowing this was a situation she wanted to get as far away from as she could before she could let herself think about it.

Térése wasn’t really expecting the ship to still be there, but it was, and no one looked particularly surprised to see that she’d returned alone. Nor did they ask her what had happened, which was just as well since her memory was a little hazy.

Sailor’s superstitions or not, she stood at the side and watched the Isles until they vanished below the horizon, and even then she kept watching. The breeches she’d borrowed from Ackerman were uncomfortable, too tight around the belly, which was weird as all the hells because she’d been skinnier than him, hadn’t she?

Distractedly, she reached down and rubbed her stomach. Whatever she’d had to eat last was sitting uncomfortably on her guts. Then found herself pressing her hand flat against her belly. It did seem a little bloated.

Some strange thought surfaced briefly, then flashed out of sight before she could grasp it. Something about… a voice? Or… skin, mottled white and orange, concealing movement under shifting light and shadow.

She frowned. Well, whatever it was, she supposed it’d come back to her in time if it was important. All she needed was sleep. And probably a bath.

_ A bath, _ her inner voice said, _ would be an excellent idea! It’s a bit chilly in here. _

“You mean 'out here',” she murmured distractedly, thinking it was odd that the voice seemed so much stronger than she remembered.

_ Er… yeah. That’s definitely what we meant, all right. _

She sighed. Her hand was on her belly again, and weirdly, considering everything that had happened, she couldn’t remember ever feeling so content. Her third time visiting the Isles and third time lucky: she always had led a charmed life, almost like something was watching over her, protecting her from harm for inexplicable reasons of its own.

“But this,” she said aloud, “is absolutely the last time.”

_ Yeah, yeah. You say that every time. _

“I bloody mean it this time.” But she was thinking about Ackerman’s book, carefully stashed away. Térése wasn’t much of a scholar these days, but she could have been if her life had taken a different track, and no one who went to the Isles ever really escaped them.

She had a feeling she’d be back someday.

After all, what was the worst that could happen?


End file.
